1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mounting apparatus to mount components on a board and a method to control the mounting apparatus. More particularly, the present invention relates to a mounting apparatus to mount electronic components such as a resistor, a capacitor, an IC, and the like on a printed wiring board, and a method to control the mounting apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are two types of mounting apparatuses used to mount electronic components on a printed wiring board, that is to say, one is a “robot type (X-Y robot)” and the other is a “rotary type”. The robot type mounting apparatus has a movable head, which moves along X and Y axes which are at right angles to each other, and the movable head is provided with a plurality of adsorbing devices each of which adsorbs an electronic component to mount it on the printed wiring board. The adsorbing devices are disposed in a row along an X axial direction on the movable head. On the other hand, in the rotary type mounting apparatus, a holding portion such as a table of the mounting apparatus, which holds the printed wiring board, moves in the x, Y directions and a plurality of adsorbing devices, such as nozzles, each of which adsorbs an electronic component, are circularly disposed. Both types of the mounting apparatuses have a recognition device to recognize a posture of the adsorbed component.
The mounting apparatus has a component library in which component information such as a shape, a terminal number, and the like of each component is stored, a component feeder information database which identifies a component disposed on each component feeder, and an NC information database in which a component feeder identifier of each component feeder is stored in each step of mounting each component on the printed wiring board. In the NC information database, an X-Y coordinate, at which each of components is to be mounted on the printed wiring board, and the like, is also included.
FIG. 9 shows a flowchart of processes to control a conventional mounting apparatus.
In the mounting apparatus, at first, a step number (No.) is reset (S50), then a component feeder identifier corresponding to a component feeder, an X-Y coordinate of a printed wiring board, and a mounting angle with respect to each mounting step are obtained from the NC information database 60 (S51). Component feeder information corresponding to the obtained component feeder identifier and a component No. as a component identifier are obtained from the component feeder information database 61 (S52). Component information of the corresponding component is obtained from the component library 62 (S53). One adsorbing device is selected from the plurality of adsorbing devices with respect to the obtained component information (S54) and the movable head is moved based on the component feeder information and adsorbs the corresponding component (S55). After a posture, or the like, of the component is detected by use of the recognition device according to the component information (S56), the movable head is moved at the obtained X-Y coordinate and the component is mounted on the printed wiring board (S57). At this time, the first step is completed and then a process to mount all of the components proceeds to the next step No. (S58). It is judged whether or not the process is finished (S59). If the process is not finished (“No” in S59), the process returns to the step S51 and if the process is finished (“Yes” in S59), the process is completed.
On the other hand, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2004-6557 discloses an electronic component mounting apparatus in which a plurality of variant mounters capable of mounting single type-electronic components are connected to each other. The mounting apparatus has a control mechanism to switch a board feeding operation and a producing operation. In preparation for the producing operation, setup operations such as changing operations by use of trays or the like, editing operations of adsorbing positions, a changing operation of the NC information database, and the like, are required. In this mounting apparatus, the setup operations or maintenance operations of equipment can be performed during the board feeding operation.
However, in the conventional mounting apparatus illustrated in FIG. 9, carrier tapes on each of which only one type of component is disposed and which supply the components to the component feeder are used. Consequently, there is a problem in that a number of types of the components which can be handled by one component mounting apparatus is limited to a number of component feeders which are included in the one mounting apparatus.
Recently, the number of types and number of components disposed on a printed wiring board have increased with improvements in packaging density, and a plurality of mounters are required to be arranged in series (see Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2004-6557).
The number of each of the components required in a board varies over in a large range depending on the component types. Therefore, one component feeder is required to be used even if the number of components of a single type is small.